THE DAILY LIFE OF THE WELL-TO-DO
Before giving some account of the way in which a Roman of
consideration spent his day in the time of Cicero, it seems necessary
to explain briefly how he reckoned the divisions of the day.
The old Latin farmer knew nothing of hours or clocks. He simply went
about his daily work with the sun and the light as guides, rising at
or before sunrise, working till noon, and, after a meal and a rest,
resuming his work till sunset. This simple method of reckoning would
suffice in a sunny climate, even when life and business became more
complicated; and it is a fact that the division of the day into hours
was not known at Rome until the introduction of the sun-dial in 263
B.C.[407] We may well find it hard to understand how such business as
the meeting of the senate, of the comitia, or the exercitus, could
have been fixed to particular times under such circumstances; perhaps
the best way of explaining it is by noting that the Romans were very
early in their habits, and that sunrise is a point of time about
which there can be no mistake[408]. But in any case the date of the
introduction of the sun-dial, which almost exactly corresponds with
the beginning of the Punic wars and the vast increase of civil
business arising out of them, may suggest at once the primitive
condition of the old Roman mind and habit, and the way in which the
Romans had to learn from other peoples how to save and arrange the
time that was beginning to be so precious.
This first sun-dial came from Catina in Sicily, and was therefore
quite unsuited to indicate the hours at Rome. Nevertheless Rome
contrived to do with it until nearly a century had elapsed; at last,
in 159 B.C., a dial calculated on the latitude of Rome was placed by
the side of it by the censor Q. Marcius Philippus. These two dials
were fixed on pillars behind the Rostra in the Forum, the most
convenient place for regulating public business, and there they
remained even in the time of Cicero[409]. But in the censorship next
following that of Philippus the first water-clock was introduced; this
indicated the hours both of day and night, and enabled every one to
mark the exact time even on cloudy days[410].
Thus from the time of the Punic wars the city population reckoned time
by hours, i.e. twelve divisions of the day; but as they continued to
reckon the day from sunrise to sunset on the principle of the old
agricultural practice, these twelve hours varied in length at
different times of the year. In mid-winter the hours were only about
forty-four minutes in length, while at mid-summer they were about
seventy-five, and they corresponded with ours only at the two
equinoxes.[411] This, of course, made the construction of accurate
dials and water-clocks a matter of considerable difficulty. It is not
necessary here to explain how the difficulties were overcome; the
reader may be referred to the article "Horologium" in the _Dictionary
of Antiquities_, and especially to the cuts there given of the dial
found at Tusculum in 1761.[412]
Sun-dials, once introduced with the proper reckoning for latitude,
soon came into general use, and a considerable number still survive
which have been found in Rome. In a fragment of a comedy by an unknown
author, ascribed to the last century B.C., Rome is described as "full
of sun-dials,"[413] and many have been discovered in other Roman
towns, including several at Pompeii. But for the ordinary Roman, who
possessed no sun-dial or was not within reach of one, the day
fell into four convenient divisions, as with us it falls into
three,--morning, afternoon, and evening. As they rose much earlier
than we do, the hours up to noon were divided into two parts: (1)
_mane_, or morning, which lasted from sunrise to the beginning of the
third hour, and (2) _ad meridiem_, or forenoon; then followed _de
meridie_, i.e. afternoon, and _suprema_, from about the ninth or
tenth hour till sunset. The authority for these handy divisions is
Censorinus, _De die natali_ (23. 9, 24. 3). There seems to be no
doubt that they originated in the management of civil business, and
especially in that of the praetor's court, which normally began at the
third hour, i.e. the beginning of ad meridiem, and went on till the
suprema (tempestas diei), which originally meant sunset, but by a lex
Plaetoria was extended to include the hour or two before dark.
The first thing to note in studying the daily life at Rome is that the
Romans, like the Greeks, were busy much earlier in the morning than
we are. In part this was the result of their comfortable southern
climate, where the nights are never so long as with us, and where the
early mornings are not so chilly and damp in summer or so cold
in winter. But it was probably still more the effect of the very
imperfect lighting of houses, which made it difficult to carry on
work, especially reading and writing, after dark, and suggested early
retirement to bed and early rising in the morning. The streets, we
must remember, were not lighted except on great occasions, and it was
not till late in Roman history that public places and entertainments
could be frequented after dark. In early times the oil-lamp with a
wick was unknown, and private houses were lighted by torches and rude
candles of wax or tallow.[414] The introduction of the use of olive
oil, which was first imported from Greece and the East and then
produced in Italy, brought with it the manufacture of lamps of various
kinds, great and small; and as the cultivation of the valuable tree,
so easily grown in Italy, increased in the last century B.C.,[415] the
oil-lamp became universal in houses, baths, etc. Even in the small old
baths of Pompeii there were found about a thousand lamps, obviously
used for illumination after dark.[416] But in spite of this and of the
invention of candelabra for extending the use of candles, it was never
possible for the Roman to turn night into day as we do in our modern
town-life. We must look on the lighting of the streets as quite an
exceptional event. This happened, for example, on the night of the
famous fifth of December 63 B.C., when Cicero returned to his house
after the execution of the conspirators; people placed lamps and
torches at their doors, and women showed lights from the roofs of the
houses.
An industrious man, especially in winter, when this want of artificial
light made time most valuable, would often begin his work before
daylight; he might have a speech to prepare for the senate, or a brief
for a trial, or letters to write, and, as we shall see, as soon as the
sun had well risen it was not likely that he would be altogether his
own master. Thus we find Cicero on a February morning writing to his
brother before sunrise,[417] and it is not unlikely that the soreness
of the eyes of which he sometimes complains may have been the result
of reading and writing before the light was good. In his country
villas he could do as he liked, but at Rome he knew that he would have
the "turba salutantium" upon him as soon as the sun had risen. Cicero
is the only man of his own time of whose habits we know much, but in
the next generation Horace describes himself as calling for pen and
paper before daylight, and later on that insatiable student the elder
Pliny would work for hours before daylight, and then go to the Emperor
Vespasian, who was also a very early riser.[418] After sunrise the
whole population was astir; boys were on their way to school, and
artisans to their labour.
If Horace is not exaggerating when he says (_Sat._ i. 1. 10) that
the barrister might be disturbed by a client at cock-crow, Cicero's
studies may have been interrupted even before the crowds came; but
this could hardly happen often. As a rule it was during the first two
hours (_mane_) that callers collected. In the old times it had been
the custom to open your house and begin your business at daybreak, and
after saluting your familia and asking a blessing of the household
gods, to attend to your own affairs and those of your clients.[419]
Although we are not told so explicitly, we must suppose that the same
practice held good in Cicero's time; under the Empire it is familiar
to all readers of Seneca or Martial, but in a form which was open to
much criticism and satire. The client of the Empire was a degraded
being; of the client in the last age of the Republic we only know that
he existed, and could be useful to his _patronus_ in many ways,--in
elections and trials especially;[420] but we do not hear of his
pressing himself on the attention of his patron every morning, or
receiving any "sportula." All the same, the number of persons, whether
clients in this sense or in the legal sense, or messengers, men of
business, and ordinary callers, who would want to see a man like
Cicero before he left his house in the morning, would beyond doubt be
considerable. Otherwise they would have to catch him in the street or
Forum; and though occasionally a man of note might purposely walk in
public in order to give his clients their chance, Cicero makes it
plain that this was not his way.[421]
Within these two first hours of daylight the busy man had to find time
for a morning meal; the idle man, who slept later, might postpone
it. This early breakfast, called _ientaculum_[422], answered to the
"coffee and roll" which is usual at the present day in all European
countries except our own, and which is fully capable of supporting
even a hard-working man for several hours. It is, indeed, quite
possible to do work before this breakfast; Antiochus, the great
doctor, is said by Galen to have visited such of his patients as lived
near him before his breakfast and on foot[423]. But as a rule the meal
was taken before a busy man went out to his work, and consisted of
bread, either dipped in wine or eaten with honey, olives, or cheese.
The breakfast of Antiochus consisted, for example, of bread and Attic
honey.
The meal over, the man of politics or business would leave his house,
outside which his clients and friends or other hangers-on would be
waiting for him, and proceed to the Forum,--the centre, as we have
seen, of all his activity--accompanied by these people in a kind of
procession. Some would go before to make room for him, while others
followed him; if bent on election business, he would have experienced
helpers,[424] either volunteers or in his pay, to save him from making
blunders as to names and personalities, and in fact to serve him
in conducting himself towards the populace with the indispensable
_blanditia_.[425] Every Roman of importance liked to have, and usually
had, a train of followers or friends in descending to the Forum of a
morning from his house, or in going about other public business; what
Q. Cicero urges on his brother in canvassing for the consulship may
hold good in principle for all the public appearances of a
public man,--"I press this strongly on you, always to be with a
multitude."[426] It may perhaps be paralleled with the love of the
Roman for processions, e.g. the lustrations of farm, city, and
army,[427] and with his instinctive desire for aid and counsel in
all important matters both of public and private life, shown in the
consilium of the paterfamilias and of the magistrate. Examples are
easy to find in the literature of this period; an excellent one is the
graphic picture of Gaius Gracchus and his train of followers, which
Plutarch has preserved from a contemporary writer. "The people
looked with admiration on him, seeing him attended by crowds of
building-contractors, artificers, ambassadors, magistrates, soldiers,
and learned men, to all of whom he was easy of access; while he
maintained his dignity, he was gracious to all, and suited his
behaviour to the condition of every individual; thus he proved the
falsehood of those who called him tyrannical or arrogant."[428]
Arrived at the Forum, if not engaged in a trial, or summoned to a
meeting of the senate, or busy in canvassing, he would mingle with the
crowd, and spend a social morning in meeting and talking with friends,
or in hearing the latest news from the provinces, or in occupying
himself with his investments with the aid of his bankers and agents.
This is the way in which such a sociable and agreeable man as Cicero
was loved to spend his mornings when not deep in the composition of
some speech or book,--and at Rome it was indeed hardly possible for
him to find the time for steady literary work. It was this social life
that he longed for when in Cilicia; "one little walk and talk with
you," he could write to Caelius at Rome, "is worth all the profits of
a province."[429] But it was also this crowded and talkative Forum
that Lucilius could describe in a passage already quoted, as teeming
with men who, with the aid of hypocrisy and blanditia, spent the
day from morning till night in trying to get the better of their
fellows.[430]
After a morning spent in the Forum, our Roman might return home in
time for his lunch (_prandium_), which had taken the place of the
early dinner (_cena_) of the olden time. Exactly the same thing
affected the hours of these meals as has affected those of our own
within the last century or so; the great increase of public business
of all kinds has with us pushed the time of the chief meal later and
later, and so it was at Rome. The senate had an immense amount of
business to transact in the two last centuries B.C., and the increase
in oratorical skill, as well as the growing desire to talk in public,
extended its sittings sometimes till nightfall.[431] So too with the
law-courts, which had become the scenes of oratorical display, and
often of that indulgence in personal abuse which has great attractions
for idle people fond of excitement. Thus the dinner hour had come to
be postponed from about noon to the ninth or even the tenth hour,[432]
and some kind of a lunch was necessary. We do not hear much of this
meal, which was in fact for most men little more than the "snack"
which London men of business will take standing at a bar; nor do we
know whether senators and barristers took it as they sat in the curia
or in court, or whether there was an adjournment for purposes
of refreshment. Such an adjournment seems to have taken place
occasionally at least, during the games under the Empire, for
Suetonius (_Claud._ 34) tells us that Claudius would dismiss the
people to take their prandium and yet remain himself in his seat. A
joke of Cicero's about Caninius Rebilus, who was appointed consul by
Caesar on the last day of the year 45 at one o'clock, shows that the
usual hour for the prandium was about noon or earlier; "under the
consulship of Caninius," he wrote to Curius, "no one ever took
luncheon."[433]
After the prandium, if a man were at home and at leisure, followed the
siesta (_meridiatio_). This is the universal habit in all southern
climates, especially in summer, and indeed, if the mind and body
are active from an early hour, a little repose is useful, if not
necessary, after mid-day. Busy men however like Cicero could not
always afford it in the city, and we find him noting near the end of
his life, when Caesar's absolutism had diminished the amount of his
work both in senate and law-courts, that he had taken to the siesta
which he formerly dispensed with.[434] Even the sturdy Varro in his
old age declared that in summer he could not possibly do without his
nap in the middle of the day.[435] On the other hand, in the famous
letter in which Cicero describes his entertainment of Caesar in
mid-winter 45 B.C., nothing is said of a siesta; the Dictator worked
till after mid-day, then walked on the shore, and returned, not for a
nap but for a bath.[436]
Caesar, as he was Cicero's guest, must have taken his bath in the
villa, probably that at Cumae (see above, p. 257). Most well-appointed
private houses had by this time a bath-room or set of bath-rooms,
providing every accommodation, according to the season and the taste
of the bather. This was indeed a modern improvement; in the old days
the Romans only washed their arms and legs daily, and took a bath
every market-day, i.e. every ninth day. This is told us in an amusing
letter of Seneca's, who also gives a description of the bath in the
villa of the elder Scipio at Liternum, which consisted of a single
room without a window, and was supplied with water which was often
thick after rain.[437] "Nesciit vivere," says Seneca, in ironical
allusion to the luxury of his own day. In Cicero's time every villa
doubtless had its set of baths, with at least three rooms,--the
_apodyterium_, _caldarium_, and _tepidarium_, sometimes also an open
swimming-bath, as in the House of the Silver Wedding at Pompeii.[438]
In Cicero's letter to his brother about the villa at Arcanum, he
mentions the dressing-room (apodyterium) and the caldarium or hot-air
chamber, and doubtless there were others. Even in the villa rustica of
Boscoreale near Pompeii, which was a working farm-house, we find the
bath-rooms complete, provided, that is, with the three essentials of
dressing-room, tepid-room, and hot-air room.[439] Caesar probably, as
it was winter, used the last of these, took in fact a Turkish bath, as
we should call it, and then went into a tepidarium, where, as Cicero
tells us, he received some messenger. Here he was anointed (unctus),
i.e. rubbed dry from perspiration, with a strigil on which oil was
dropped to soften its action.[440] When this operation was over, about
the ninth hour, which in mid-winter would begin about half-past one,
he was ready for the dinner which followed immediately.[441] This we
may take as the ordinary winter dinner-hour in the country; in summer
it would be an hour or so later. In an amusing story given as a
rhetorical illustration in the work known as _Rhetorica ad Herennium_,
iv. 63, the guests (doomed never to get their dinner that day except
in an inn) are invited for the tenth hour. But in the city it must
have often happened that the hour was later, owing to the press of
business. For example, on one occasion when the senate had been
sitting _ad noctem_, Cicero dines with Pompeius after its dismissal
(_ad Fam_. i. 2.3). Another day we find him going to bed after his
dinner, and clearly not for a siesta, which, as we saw, he never had
time to take in his busy days; this, however, was not actually in Rome
but in his villa at Formiae, where he was at that time liable to much
interruption from callers (_ad Att_. ii. 16). Probably, like most
Romans of his day, he had spent a long time over his dinner, talking
if he had guests, or reading and thinking if he were alone or with his
family only.
The dinner, _cena_, was in fact the principal private event of the
day; it came when all business was over, and you could enjoy the
privacy of family life or see your friends and unbend with them. At no
other meal do we hear of entertainment, unless the guests were on
a journey, as was the case at the lunch at Arcanum when Pomponia's
temper got the better of her (see above, p. 52). Even dinner-parties
seem to have come into fashion only since the Punic wars, with later
hours and a larger staff of slaves to cook and wait at table. In the
old days of household simplicity the meals were taken in the atrium,
the husband reclining on a _lectus_,[442] the wife sitting by his
side, and the children sitting on stools in front of them. The slaves
too in the olden time took their meal sitting on benches in the
atrium, so that the whole familia was present. This means that the
dinner was in those days only a necessary break in the intervals of
work, and the sitting posture was always retained for slaves, i.e.
those who would go about their work as soon as the meal was over.
Columella, writing under the early Empire, urges that the vilicus or
overseer should sit at his dinner except on festivals; and Cato the
younger would not recline after the battle of Pharsalia for the
rest of his life, apparently as a sign that life was no longer
enjoyable.[443]
But after the Second Punic war, which changed the habits of the Roman
in so many ways, the atrium ceased to be the common dining-place, and
special chambers were built, either off the atrium or in the interior
part of the house about the peristylium, or even upstairs, for the
accommodation of guests, who might be received in different rooms,
according to the season and the weather.[444] These _triclinia_ were
so arranged as to afford the greatest personal comfort and the best
opportunities for conversation; they indicate clearly that dinner is
no longer an interval in the day's work, but a time of repose and ease
at the end of it. The plan here given of a triclinium, as described by
Plutarch, in his _Quaestiones conviviales_,
Lectus medius.
+--------------------------------+----------------+
Chief | | |
Guest | | | Lectus
| | | Summus
+-----------------+--------------+ |
H | | | |
| | | |
Lectus | | Mensa | |
Imus | | | |
| +--------------+ |
| | +----------------+
| |
| |
| |
| |
+-----------------+
PLAN OF A TRICLINIUM.
will show this sufficiently without elaborate description; but it is
necessary to notice that the host always or almost always occupied the
couch marked H on the plan, while the one immediately above him, i.e.
No. 3 of the _lectus medius_, was reserved for the most important
guest, and called _lectus consularis_. Plutarch's account, and a
little consideration, will show that the host was thus well placed for
the superintendence of the meal, as well as for conversation with his
distinguished guest; and that the latter occupied what Plutarch calls
a free corner, so that any messengers or other persons needing to see
him could get access to him without disturbing the party.[445] The
number that could be accommodated, nine, was not only a sacred and
lucky one, but exactly suited for convenience of conversation and
attendance. Larger parties were not unheard of, even under the
Republic, and Vitruvius tells us that some dining-rooms were fitted
with three or more triclinia; but to put more than three guests on a
single couch, and so increase the number, was not thought courteous or
well-bred. Among the points of bad breeding which Cicero attributes to
his enemy Calpurnius Piso, the consul of 58, one was that he put five
guests to recline on a single couch, while himself occupying one
alone; so Horace:
Saepe tribus lectis videas cenare quaternos.[446]
As the guests were made so comfortable, it may be supposed that they
were not in a hurry to depart; the mere fact that they were reclining
instead of sitting would naturally dispose them to stay. The triclinia
were open at one end, i.e. not shut up as our dining-rooms are, and
the air would not get close and "dinnery." Cicero describes old
Cato[447] (no doubt from some passage in Cato's writings) as remaining
in conversation at dinner until late at night. The guests would arrive
with their slaves, who took off their walking shoes, if they had come
on foot, and put on their sandals (_soleae_): each wore a festive
dress (_synthesis_), of Greek origin like the other features of the
entertainment, and there was no question of changing these again in a
hurry. Nothing can better show the difference between the old Roman
manners and the new than the character of these parties; they are
the leisurely and comfortable rendezvous of an opulent and educated
society, in which politics, literature or philosophy could be
discussed with much self-satisfaction. That such discussion did not go
too deeply into hard questions was perhaps the result of the comfort.
There was of course another side to this picture of the evening of a
Roman gentleman. There was a coarse side to the Roman character, and
in the age when wealth, the slave trade, and idle habits encouraged
self-indulgence, meals were apt to become ends in themselves instead
of necessary aids to a wholesome life. The ordinary three parts or
courses (_mensae_) of a dinner,--the gustatio or light preliminary
course, the cena proper, with substantial dishes, and the dessert of
pastry and fruit, could be amplified and extended to an unlimited
extent by the skill of the slave-cooks brought from Greece and the
East (see above, p. 209); the gourmand had appeared long before
the age of Cicero and had been already satirised by Lucilius and
Varro.[448] Splendid dinner-services might take the place of the
old simple ware, and luxurious drapery and rugs covered the couches
instead of the skins of animals, as in the old time.[449] Vulgarity
and ostentation, such as Horace satirised, were doubtless too often to
be met with. Those who lived for feasting and enjoyment would invite
their company quite early in the day (tempestativum convivium) and
carry on the revelry till midnight.[450] And lastly, the practice of
drinking wine after dinner (_comissatio_), simply for the sake of
drinking, under fixed rules according to the Greek fashion, familiar
to us all in the _Odes_ of Horace, had undoubtedly begun some time
before the end of the Public. In the Actio prima of his Verrine
orations Cicero gives a graphic picture of a convivium beginning
early, where the proposal was made and agreed to that the drinking
should be "more graeco."[451]
But it would be a great mistake to suppose that this kind of
self-indulgence was characteristic of the average Roman life of this
age. The ordinary student is liable to fall into this error because
he reads his Horace and his Juvenal, but dips a very little way
into Cicero's correspondence; and he needs to be reminded that the
satirists are not deriding the average life of the citizen, any more
than the artists who make fun of the foibles of our own day in the
pages of _Punch_. Cicero hardly ever mentions his meals, his cookery,
or his wine, even in his most chatty letters; such matters did not
interest him, and do not seem to have interested his friends, so far
as we can judge by their letters. In one amusing letter to Poetus, he
does indeed tell him what he had for dinner at a friend's house, but
only by way of explaining that he had been very unwell from eating
mushrooms and such dishes, which his host had had cooked in order not
to contravene a recent sumptuary law.[452] The Letters are worth far
more as negative evidence of the usual character of dinners than
either the invectives (vituperationes) against a Piso or an Antony,
or the lively wit of the satirists. Let us return for an instant, in
conclusion, to that famous letter, already quoted, in which Cicero
describes the entertainment of Caesar at Cumae in December, 45.
It contains an expression which has given rise to very mistaken
conclusions both about Caesar's own habits and those of his day. After
telling Atticus that his guest sat down to dinner when the bath was
over he goes on: "[Greek: Emetikaen] agebat; itaque et edit et bibit
[Greek: adeos] et iucunde, opipare sane et apparate, nec id solum, sed
bene cocto
condito, sermone bono, et si quaeri, libenter."
Even good scholars used formerly to make the mistake of supposing that
Caesar, a man habitually abstemious, or at least temperate, had made
up his mind to over-eat himself on this occasion, as he was intending
to take an emetic afterwards. And even now it may be as well to point
out that medical treatment by a course of emetics was a perfectly well
known and valued method at this time;[453] that Caesar, whose health
was always delicate, and at this time severely tried, was then under
this treatment, and could therefore eat his dinner comfortably,
without troubling himself about what he ate and drank: and that the
apt quotation from Lucilius, and the literary conversation which (so
Cicero adds) followed the dinner, prove beyond all question that this
was no glutton's meal, but one of that ordinary and rational type, in
which repose and pleasant intercourse counted for more than the mere
eating and drinking.
No more work seems to have been done after the cena was over and the
guests had retired. We found Cicero on one occasion going to bed soon
after the meal; and, as he was up and active so early in the morning,
we may suppose that he retired at a much earlier hour than we do. But
of this last act of the day he tells us nothing.